Our adoption journey

This past week I was honored to share our adoption journey at the Deaconess annual fundraising luncheon!
It dawned on me, I have never really put in words our journey until now! So here it is :)

I'm Chassidy wife to an amazing husband John and mother to 2 precious children, Turner who is almost 3 and our doll baby Lydia who is almost 10 months.

I believe my adoption journey began when I was only 3 years old. I grew up in a small town in the Texas panhandle made up of predominantly white people and absolutely no African Americans. But on my 3rd birthday my dear Grandma Rose gave me this precious black baby doll that I proudly named Lydia after my great grandmother.

Fast forward 20 plus years to when I met my prince charming, John Allen. As part of our wedding ceremony we read Ruth 1 vs 16-17
But Ruth said,
“Do not press me to leave you
or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
Where you lodge, I will lodge;
Your people shall be my people
and your God my God."

We liked this verse because of the love, loyalty and compassion Ruth and Naomi had for one another and their willingness to take their 2 different backgrounds and become one family. Ironically enough, or maybe it was just God all along, the story of Ruth and Naomi is also a story of adoption.

As I reflect back on the past 5 years I can't help but compare our lives to a classic fairy tale. Every fairy tale begins with a once upon a time and is filled with joys, tragedies, triumphs, fears, disappointments, lessons learned, but they always ends with a Happily Ever After. Our adoption journey has been no different.

After nearly 3 years of various fertility treatments, failed pregnancies, and a miscarriage we chose to create our family thru adoption. After the mountains of paper work and background checks we were quickly chosen on a Thursday afternoon by a birth mother who was having a baby boy. 4 short days later we laid our eyes on one of God’s greatest miracles our Turner Cantrell. Just as special as meeting him for the 1st time was meeting his birth mom Charlene. Contrary to our beliefs and former stereotypes, she had a deep love for this child she had carried for 9 months but due to circumstances she simply was unable to parent. She made a selfless decision to give life to this beautiful child and chose a forever family to love him.

14 months later we felt the desire to expand our family once again. This time we were chosen while the birth mom still had 3 months left in her pregnancy. We were blessed to experience some of the things we hadn’t been able to experience with Turner such as doctor appointments, ultra sounds, and even held our birth moms hand when she was in labor. We took this sweet baby boy home from the hospital and 10 days later our world was turned upside down when his birth mom choose to parent. To say our hearts were broken is an understatment. But we held on to the promise that God knew our hearts desires and even when our minds couldn't make sense of it all, he knew all along this was the best decision. And I am happy to say we still have a friendship & relationship with both this birth mom and child and were honored to be a part of his 1st birthday party celebrations in June.

Despite the peace we had with her decision and our hearts desire to have another child, we still struggled moving forward. Our hearts were filled with fears of being rejected and doubts, but after much prayer and support from the women of Deaconess, we decided to try again.

A few months later we received a call that healed our broken hearts- A birth mom choose us for her baby girl. Much like our 2nd experience we were blessed to go to doctor appointments, ultrasounds, and witness the birth of our little Lydia Kaye. I have to stop here and tell you the bond I have with these birth moms is like nothing I have ever experienced or had a desire to experience when we started our adoption journey We started out as strangers but because of 2 sweet babies we have an immediate intimate relationship that is truly a blessing from above and no one can ever break

If I have learned a lesson from our experience- it is that we serve an awesome God who cares for us! The waiting, the unknown, roller coaster of emotions and the complete lack of control has taught me that only God knows our happily ever after.

And we are living proof of it! Turner is nearly 3 years old and he’s our spirited child! He is definitely all boy who loves bugs, trucks, cooking with his daddy and playing outside. He informed us last week that he has a girlfriend who lives outside named Brooke that has blue hair and pink eyes! Lydia is our laid back sister whose big brown eyes sparkle and her smile lights up any room. She loves to be held, is crawling, babbling all the time, and attempts to stand like a big girl until her brother comes knocking her down! She adores her big brother who has taught her how to clap and play the drums. Some days I have to pinch myself to make sure this isn’t all a big dream! These love bugs are more than I ever imagined, guessed or requested in my wildest dreams!

I can’t imagine our family created any other way than thru adoption. We are forever changed and blessed beyond words!

The past 2 weeks were able to spend some good quality time with our birth families too! Don't they all have such fun hair!
Sweet sisters!

This little love bug is too cute for words! Trinity just turned a year old and is Turner's biological 1/2 sister

It was quiet entertaining having all 4 kids for the night but so much fun! Only one missing in the picture is Jordan but he was helping me make the little ones look at the camera

It's hard to believe they are only 3 months apart. Trinity wears size 3 T and Lydia is still fitting into 6 month clothes!